West Games has launched a Kickstarter campaign for the supposedly ‘definitive spiritual successor’ to the STALKER series, called Aeral. The team aims to raise $50K in the next 29 days, and as you’d expect, this Kickstarter did not pass unnoticed from Vostok Games; the team that has released the MP spiritual successor to the STALKER series.
Josh Griffiths writes: "When a campaign is suspended its funding is permanently halted. If we take the word of those who have had their project suspended, Kickstarter gives little to no warning that your campaign is at risk. They don’t tell creators why their campaigns were suspended, nor do they communicate with them after the fact. In the most extreme cases like Plane Simulator 2001 and Should I Bother With this Game, the titles give you a good idea on why Kickstarter took action. But with Kickstarters like Flat Kingdom and Chumba World, it’s a lot less apparent."
I was wondering when someone would write an article like this, what with all the shady campaigns that have failed recently. Going to be a good read.
West Games and World Wide Funder has been noted doing very shady dealings as of late. Looking into this we find some odd details that does not help the lesser known funding website.
lol.. West Games. I was one of the people who helped expose them on their Kickstarter page for their game Areal. What a $hit storm that turned out to be.
what's the controversy, exactly? the audio doesn't really provide any information at all, apart from there being some sort of controversy or "shady dealings."
also, i accidentally clicked disagree when i was aiming to click reply, so i +bubbed you to compensate...
West Games had an idea for a game called Areal (based off of a book by some guy who apparently was affiliated with the team - even though we never saw him in any videos). The developers were comprised of some people who were responsible for helping to make some of the original STALKER games. However all their footage of game stuff turned out to be merely assets that you can buy from the Unity Store which they were claiming to be stuff they created from scratch. We never saw any gameplay video during the whole campaign save for a short scene with a guy in a field.. All we ended up getting was some concept art and some vague interpretations of how the game would look and feel.
They also started created fake accounts to spam all the comments sections so that any valid questions or concerns would be buried under walls of text.
It was a real bizarre situation to be honest, but it was almost like one of those "this is so bad it can't be real sort of things".
Needless to say, we constantly raised concerns with Kickstarter until they finally suspended the project and put a stop to it.
Ahmad Khan writes: "West Games is back to their same old tricks again, but this time they are aggravating more than just Stalker fans and crowdfunding enthusiasts. Here's a quick recap of what the fine folks at West Games have been doing while the rest of us are getting ready for the winter holidays."
STALKER is one of the most immersive games I've ever played. I'm very much looking forward to a new entry. ***GET TOUTA HEA STAWKER***
Wish they would combine both,survarium would be mp and Aeral sp seeing as it's hard for Aeral to reach its mp stretch goal
Oh man that can't be good. Going to read West Games response now.